Comment by fooker
Comment by fooker a day ago
Great, except firefox is pretty bad nowadays.
Not their fault of course, with people not testing websites on non chrome derived browsers.
Comment by fooker a day ago
Great, except firefox is pretty bad nowadays.
Not their fault of course, with people not testing websites on non chrome derived browsers.
Those "default options" are precisely "intentionally leav[ing] users vulnerable to hostile ad tech" (e.g. PPA). It's built into the browser and on by default. Mozilla have very explicitly stated they believe ads are critical for the web. It is still better the chrome though (and a patch set like librewolf is better still).
Mozilla can have this position (and probably have it due to most of their funding coming from an ad company), but can still hold the position that the user must remain in control and be able to remove ads if they wish, even if it goes against the beliefs of Mozilla. Meanwhile, Google is actively working to make it harder to block ads in Chrome and in general work on technology which take away users freedom to control how their own computers should behave.
> Those "default options" are precisely "intentionally leav[ing] users vulnerable to hostile ad tech" (e.g. PPA).
The difference between Firefox's 1x and Chromium's 100x + 100x is in the degree of harm visited upon the user.
Finding harsh fault with former while giving the much more egregious example a pass -- this makes sense if one feels Firefox isn't abusive enough towards it's users.
How? Seriously, I keep seeing this argument against using Firefox, but as a long time user I fail to see any glaring issues with it.
The only websites that break for me are those I broke on purpose by using ad-block.
> I keep seeing this argument against using Firefox, but as a long time user I fail to see any glaring issues with it.
No glaring or usability issues.
What happened is that Firefox added some defaults that mimic a tiny bit of Chromium browser behavior.
Recommend extensions as you browse
Recommend features as you browse
Send technical and interaction data to Mozilla
Allow websites to perform privacy-preserving ad measurement
> trouble on Firefox can be counted on a single hand
*over the course of a few years, seriously.
In particular, it's sad to encounter such a rare issue only to then discover its true origin - Firefox implemented a necessary functionality according to spec, whereas Chrome decided to do its own thing. Case in point video streaming with Motion JPEG, Firefox dispatches events on every frame and uses a lot of resources, but Chrome decided not to do that, against the spec.
I set my default choice to pro-privacy (Firefox) and occasionally give it up to some Chromium variant if I depend on a functionality and a website justifiable needs it. The disruption to my workflow here is such a minor thing compared to what I gain usability wise, especially in the long run. I would never treat a software program like some religion, and it saddens me that even computer-savvy people do just that.
> the number of website that ever gave me trouble on Firefox can be counted on a single hand
Also important is that they tend to be Google assets like Gmail.
Yeah, it's merely performance issues. If you used FF you don't notice it, but it's extremely apparent if you switched over from Chrome like me.
Nothing dealbreaking, and I get that this is all on Google. But it's one of the clearest examples of where FF falls short of Chrome.
I've switched to Firefox 3 years ago now after using Chrome for a decade. The list of things I missed from chrome:
- Tab grouping, now added in Firefox as of a few months ago
- built-in translation services. Firefox is slowly introducing this, but its missing many languages. In the meantime, a translation extension works fine.
- Google products operating better... but the issue here is obvious and outside of Firefox's control.
- various micro quirks from random sites I might find during research. Nothing functionality breaking, just clear examples where there was likely hard coded chrome user agent business.
- the occasional extension on Chrome that didn't have a Firefox port. This happened maybe 4 times total.
so, 2 things that are fixed (or close to), one anti-competitive measure, and the 2 smallest nitpicks I could imagine. I don't know what the fuss is that justifies Firefox being considered vastly inferior to Chrome these days. Even thsoe small issues are far offset by the ability to have proper adblock. Using Adblock on Chrome for my work computer is miserable.
Firefox has been my main browser for almost 10 years and I haven't encountered any challenges other than availability of plugins, but even that has been a very rare issue.
> except firefox is pretty bad nowadays.
Pretty bad as in that isn't true?
Firefox is the option that doesn't intentionally leave users vulnerable to hostile adtech. Firefox is the option with containers. Past that it is performant and reliable under a wide variety of user loads and platforms.
or Pretty bad as in Firefox+forks are better than the alternatives?
It is true that some unfortunate default options were recently added to Firefox configs.
Those options are unfortunate because they are variants of anti-user options baked into Chromium - options created to keep Chromium users susceptible to big-tech's worst intentions.